All posts tagged ‘mystery case files’

The island setting for the new Wii game "Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident," offers lots of potential for a themed party.

With an extended family as varied as ours — ages ranging from preschool to 80s, with expert gamers, novices and video-game skeptics among them — it’s a tall order to find a Wii game we can all play together. But when Nintendo offered to hook us up with everything we needed to host a mystery-themed party for the launch of the E-rated Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident for Wii, we jumped on it.

The hidden-picture puzzles let everyone get in on the action, and the riddles that advance the plot — which centers on a mysterious island and its mystical powers — had three generations of our family teaming up to figure out the solutions.

In The Malgrave Incident, you’re a sleuth called to a fog-shrouded island where a disaster has left the town an abandoned ruin. Mysterious clues abound, and your unseen host, Winston Malgrave, communicates his requests and directions via a homemade communicator that’s cleverly designed to resemble your Wii remote. Following his orders leads you deeper into the mysteries of the island, which include spring water reported to have magical healing powers and an explosive “incident” that led to the island’s desertion.

Along the way, you collect a purple dust that powers another of Malgrave’s homegrown devices, transporting you to different places on the island. The dust — and the objects needed to solve puzzles in the game — comes from finding items in a series of three-dimensional hidden-picture puzzles. Some items are part of the still life, some are revealed by manipulating the objects within, and others are ingeniously disguised within the puzzle.

Navigating the island and solving the puzzles kept our multigenerational gamers engaged, but when the hidden-picture puzzles came up, even those without Wii remotes jumped in to help.

We’re playing in Adventure mode in this video, where up to 4 players can team up (and countless more can shout ideas and encouragement from the living room). You can also face off in competitive mode.

If you’d like to host a Malgrave Incident party of your own, here are some ideas for theming it, from food to decorations. I can’t take any credit for the decorating — all of that goes to my mother, who can take WalMart jars, a Dollar Tree fish net, a bunch of seashells and some rope and make it all look like it came straight from the Pottery Barn. Here’s how she set an island mood that was perfect for the party:

Shells, candles, rope and sand placed inside jars or lanterns help set the island theme.

You can go as crazy as you want to with the seaside theme, but you don't have to spend a lot of clams. This net was $1 at Dollar Tree.

Summertime means that dollar stores are selling lots of inexpensive beachy/island-themed goods that you can use to set the mood. If you don’t have a stock of shells from your last beach trip, try cutting sea stars out of paper or cardboard to hang in a dollar-store fish net.

Shells and coral set the tone around the TV. If you only decorate one area, you might as well make it one that everyone will see during the party.

How about food? Island cuisine is a natural, but Malgrave Island isn’t exactly tropical, with its foggy, windswept shores and desolate expanses of ruins. We opted for seafood and other nautical-inspired treats, like this shark watermelon we found on GeekMom:

A few Swedish fish in the shark's maw make for a fun touch. Thanks, Mom, for carving this guy! I'm not too good with knives and melons.

Dishes you can make in advance, like this shrimp pasta salad, keep the party running smoothly without running you ragged.

Easy seafood: These Matlaw's stuffed clams are less than $5 a box at WalMart.

Swedish fish: $1 a box, and tasty, too.

We whipped up some drinks inspired by the mysterious purple dust on Malgrave Island, including this sparkling sangria.

Simple-to-make seafood appetizers like surimi with wasabi dip rounded out the menu.

At the end of the party, we sent our sleuths home with certificates declaring them Master Detectives.

We didn’t have enough time to solve the mystery during our party, so we’re thinking of creating a weekly game night to discover what’s really happening on Malgrave Island. With any luck, we’ll all be a lot better at finding our lost keys, shoes and homework after all of those hidden-object puzzles.

To celebrate the release of The Malgrave Incident, the latest game in the Mystery Case Files series, three producers from Nintendo and Big Fish Games fielded questions from GeekMom on what goes into developing a video game.

Nintendo’s Azusa Tajima and Masa Miyazaki, along with producer Shawn Seavers and the team from Big Fish Games, told us how they keep the world’s leading hidden-object series interesting, what to look for in the latest game, and what might be ahead for the series.

GM: What are the challenges specific to developing an E-rated game?

Big Fish Games: Our biggest challenge in making an E-rated game is creating a compelling story that is not too complicated. The goal is to have a plot that is easily understood but one that also has enough layers to keep players interested over the course of the game. In addition to the story, we also have to be careful when hiding objects. There are objects that could change the rating so we need to make sure that we keep those out of the scenes.

Nintendo: In general, it takes a big team effort to develop an E-rated game. We need to fulfill a lot of criteria set by the ESRB. For this particular game, there are so many hidden objects in the game that it was a significant challenge for us to eradicate objects that could affect the rating.

GM: What are the challenges you face when developing a sequel, especially in a long-running series?

Big Fish: For us, the challenge is two-fold. The first challenge always lies in creating something fresh and new without abandoning what it was that made the series successful in the first place. Players tend to come back to their favorite series with a complicated set of expectations. They usually want a similar experience, but they don’t want the exact same game. The trick is trying to match their expectations while offering an experience that feels new. At the same time, you can’t forget that there are people who haven’t played the series. The game has to be accessible by someone who has never played before. The trick here is to give the new player enough information to get started without feeling too repetitive to those players who are familiar with the series.

Nintendo: The biggest challenge would be to figure out what and how we should bring into a sequel to surprise the players in a positive way and keep the series fresh. Often times, this tends to be challenging to accomplish since we also need to make sure that we retain the identity of the series at the same time. For this new Mystery Case Files game, one of the things we asked Big Fish Games is to create the navigation scenes in 3D and the ability to look around by panning the camera. We think that this was a challenging proposition for Big Fish Games to undertake, but we acknowledge that they did an excellent job.

GM: What tone do you try to strike with the games, and how does that come through in the gameplay?

Big Fish: For each game we try to do something fresh. We like to vary the story’s setting and mix up the style of gameplay to keep things interesting. There’s always an undercurrent of gloom in the Mystery Case Files world, but we try to incorporate a lot of dark humor to complement the setting and lighten the mood. We also tend to create a sense of solitude in Mystery Case Files games. The player is typically investigating empty buildings or abandoned locations. Being alone in an unfamiliar place immediately creates a unique tone.

Nintendo: We saw how the Mystery Case Files series has evolved and developed on PC in terms of the tone and gameplay, and we felt that The Malgrave Incident should be in line with that stream of evolution. As a result, Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident features a darker, more serious story with more adventure elements than Mystery Case Files: Millionheir, which was released on Nintendo DS.

Big Fish: We were excited to see what we could do with the series on the Wii! When we started thinking about this game, we imagined friends and family coming together to play in their living rooms so we tried to incorporate elements that would take advantage of this. We designed a cooperative element where up to four players can work together to find hidden objects. That is a first for the series. We also created a multiplayer mode that showcases the hidden-object mechanic in new and entertaining ways. The entire game was built in 3D which is a first for us. We also redesigned the hidden-object scenes with a “layered” approach that gives the scenes a look and feel that is different from our PC titles.

Nintendo: When we started to work on this title, one of our biggest goals is to create a unique experience of multiplayer hidden object puzzles that everyone can enjoy together in their living room. The single-player experience is also very unique. You cannot experience the 3D navigational scenes and hidden object puzzles with parallax effect in other Mystery Case Files titles.

GM: Any hints of what can we look forward to for future Mystery Case Files games?

Big Fish Games: There’s a great deal of fun to be had with some of our past story lines. We had some memorable characters, gorgeous scenery, and entertaining puzzles. At the same time, we’ve got some fun new game mechanics that might be better off with a new story line. We keep trying to “one up” our last game so we can’t wait for people to see what we’re working on!

Nintendo: This is totally Big Fish Games’ call. As a fan of Mystery Case Files series, we are looking forward to playing their next installment!

Up next: A Mystery Case Files party, and a Q&A for geeklings who are interested in careers in video-game development.